


On the Last Dragons of Old Westeros

by LittleRaven



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen, History book, Westeros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:54:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25214245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/pseuds/LittleRaven
Summary: A lost document written within a century, perhaps decades of the fall of King’s Landing, re-emerges.
Relationships: Drogon & Rhaegal & Daenerys Targaryen & Viserion
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: Unconventional Fanwork Exchange 2020





	On the Last Dragons of Old Westeros

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kingstoken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingstoken/gifts).



From _Old Westeros: A Compendium of Writings from Oldtown and Other Places_ , edited by Iduna Goldwater 

The following was written as if it was meant to be included in a history of Westeros, and it has been dated to not long after the latest of the events it describes—likely no more than within a century after—but it has never appeared in any official record of the time. It was found in the detritus of what was once called Oldtown, the Old Westerosi city then thought to value learning above all else. Perhaps including it was deemed impolitic, whether by the author or the maesters; it takes a somewhat favorable view of the last Targaryen queen, who was not popular in Westeros at the time this would have been written. 

As this book is a survey of historical writings from the period, it would have been negligent not to include a text which can only help to illustrate the variety of thought present in a time of upheaval such as the one described here. 

The dragon is the largest of beasts, apart from the elephant, though the direct comparison has not been made in centuries. Once the elephants and dragons were enemies due to that similarity, as elephants were used to fight the lords of Valyria during the time of their expansion. They were said to have come from the fiery mountains of that land, and transformed its shepherds into mighty rulers. So from the beginning, they have been a source of power, greater than any granted by horse or steel, with the art of using them guarded closely by their masters. 

More recently, the dragon was linked to the line of Targaryen dragon lords who ruled Westeros for three centuries, and extinct for years, but from the skulls which remained, their size could be seen to vary throughout the generations; it is possible they never truly disappeared, and instead became so small they disappeared, no longer recognizable as dragons. 

If that is so, then perhaps it is not so great a miracle that the larger kind returned. It is said they were born in fire, of death and a woman. From a pyre they emerged, drinking mother’s milk as though they were babes. The last Targaryen queen and the last dragons, or so it was thought. No one who bore witness has made themselves available to corroborate it. 

Of the new dragons, there has been enough corroboration. Drogon, according to stories red and black, the largest; Rhaegal, green and bronze; Viserion, cream and gold; they were born of death, and by their fire much death was brought across two continents. Once more old cities fell, their power broken and their lords brought to heel by the Valyrian might, as the exiled Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen took the path of her ancestors from three centuries back. 

“Fire made flesh,” goes the theory of a dragon’s nature. They embody the characteristics of fire, in the beauty of their scales and burning eyes, the deadliness not only of their breath, but of their claws and teeth. Fire, that element rarely found in nature, but which when made and harnessed can change a whole civilization. It brings warmth, better food—and indeed it has been said that dragons are the only creature alive besides men who cook their food before eating it; what a shame that there are none to study, to see if they could be induced to eat raw meat, and what would happen as a result—and it can spread quickly, bringing agonizing death. Fire builds, and fire destroys. It has made empires, in the Old Valyrians and the unification of Westeros, and destroyed them, as with Old Ghis, whose Ghiscari descendants no longer remember much of what was before the Valyrian conquest. 

The events brought about by the Stormborn, with Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion, could be seen to prove that definition of what a dragon is. A dragon herself that queen was said to be, naming them her children, taking the title “Mother of Dragons” as easily as she did the title of a ruler, and she led them through Essos, through the old cities of Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen, destroying the ancient practice of slavery. It is not said that it was easy, but it is said they stood no chance, that the people who were chattel took the opportunity, and so a royal Targaryen found common cause not with the great lords someone of a noble family would rally for support, but with those who served them; in essence, taking the power of those families, with their ancient lineages, for her own. Even now, with her death and only one known dragon remaining, the site long known as Slaver’s Bay is still the Bay of Dragons, as she had it called, and those who fought under her will not allow their victories to end with her life. 

It was that relentless path of a dragon that she took to Westeros. The Stormborn brought about a reckoning for the lords who had been striving for power ever since the last Targaryen had sat in the Iron Throne of her ancestors. The War of the Five Kings, which will not be covered here as it has already been written of in great detail, had taken its toll upon Westeros, with the families Baratheon, Lannister, Stark, and Greyjoy ravaging the land and its people as they struggled for control. The fallout had all but extinguished the first three of these families, and others who had allied with them or fought against them, when the Targaryen, by now commonly called “the dragon queen,” sailed in with the support of Greyjoy, Tyrell, and Martell. Though that support was shattered not long after, and her position further weakened by fighting a war against a mysterious enemy from the North of the Wall, she swept through the continent and took King’s Landing with but one dragon—Drogon, the mightiest, sometimes described in stories as a reincarnation of Balerion the Dread, the dragon Aegon Targaryen rode when he made Westeros his family’s domain—who did more than the many valorous men, Unsullied, Dothraki, and Northerners alike, who formed her host. Perhaps if Cersei Lannister, then queen of the Seven Kingdoms, had had elephants, she might have had a better chance; it was only the one dragon at the time, the other two being lost. It is said she sought them, and was much disappointed at her inability to acquire any. 

Daenerys Targaryen took the city and brought it to the ground, just as her family had built it up. It was only by betrayal that she was brought low; her own allies in Tyrion Lannister and Jon Snow—the latter also being Aegon Targaryen, a secret heir to the Iron Throne—conspired to murder her and found success.

Her presence in history was brief, but cast a long shadow. It was in the ruins of the city that a new king was named by those noble families who remained to support him, and then it was the Seven Kingdoms became six with the secession of the North, leading to the independence of the Iron Islands and Dorne not long after, though the last two had to fight the new king rather harder for that, as he was a Stark and less inclined to grant them what he had given his sister. 

Across the sea, what was left of the slavers saw an opportunity to take back what had been theirs, and the freed peoples of Essos continued to fight them, with Meereen as their stronghold. The passing storm of the dragons, however brief, was catalyst enough. 

Some still say it was not so brief. Drogon, as was reported, had carried off his lady mother, and flown through Essos to revive her, as she had awoken him from a stone egg. If such a miracle did happen, it did not bring back Daenerys Targaryen as queen, which makes it rather doubtful; could she, perhaps more dragon than the beasts themselves, who had transformed so much, have been content to not return and continue her work? The idea is almost more miraculous than the idea of the dead woman coming back to life. 

The dragons came into the world and, as before, took the remnants of the old with them, leaving a new one to emerge from the pyre.


End file.
